I have several credit cards with no fees to use when I am traveling. In fact, using these credit cards almost always gives better exchange rate than anywhere else you could change your money (including the bank), so not only is it convenient, you actually save money. There are many to choose from, I am surprised you know of the 3% fee and yet you did not do a simple search to see if there are fee-free cards - it is not like you have to be loyal to your CC if it is screwing you? In general, the easiest ones to get are the ones from Capital One. All of their cards come with zero foreign exchange fee, and you will always be approved as long as you apply for the correct tier e.g. if you are a student/no-credit history don't try to apply to their intermediate or upper cards, the low tier still has no annual or exchange fees it just comes with lower limits and higher interest (if you care about the interest it means you don't pay the full balance, hence I suggest you avoid credit cards completely). Then there are better ones, e.g. I usually use a Citibank Thank You Premiere, but that one normally has an annual fee (unless you hit a promotion like I did). And I think people who travel to Asia can also use Discover cards, which will not be accepted in most other parts of the world. Be careful though, some countries have switched to the new credit cards with the chip that are not common in the US. So, research before travelling.
The title takes women's rights back several decades. Oh, yeah, its a big post, uncommon for the likes of the womenfolk ehh? Oh, that's not all, it is also *techy* eehh? Right, because we know how it goes with women and technology - har har!. What? Linux is involved? I' d never...! Wow, Congrats slashdot.
And this post would not be complete without some lame predictions of future/. articles - shall we? -Fellulah Davidovic, first woman to load a file onto emacs! -Regina Filange, first woman to live in her mom's basement well into her thirties!
Uh, oh, I am really worried about myself. Not only can I think of many ways I could construct explosive or incendiary devices, I can think of OVER 100 WAYS TO KILL someone! And there are quite a few people I don't really like! Many of them are sitting in the parliament (note: I am Greek) so they have connections to the police! I am surely a prime suspect for potential terrorism, murder, political assassination and I don't know what else! Oh, shit! I just realized I know where the VAGINA is! Potential for RAPE right there!!! Where do I hide guys???
First of all, dude, forget about your mom for a second. If the bride-to-be figures out your wedding choices are to please your mom, there will be problems! Secondly, invitations that you open and they play music were cool 25 years ago. QR codes would be a lot of fun for your 1 buddy that would "get it" (of course the QR code would have to actually be something). And, well, I will just go ahead and stop you with the lcd's. The only cool invitation hardware wise that I have seen is the embedded manual paper record player. If you are good with photoshop perhaps you want to design your wedding invitation (but print it professionally of course) and really make it special. You can also make a website, and a reservation system. For example, I had included a personal code with each invitation, that when entered in the wedding website it logged on the individual and allowed him/her to just select the number of people and accept. No, you cannot have just a QR code there, people won't be able to use it. Finally, be careful of the mom thing.
Re:Heins and RIM vs Elop and Nokia
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CEOs of RIM Step Down
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· Score: 5, Insightful
You talk about Elop like he is a good thing, when he is either a complete idiot or a Microsoft shill (I estimate the latter). He was correct that Symbian was a difficult environment to develop to (my company gave it up for that reason), however Nokia had explicitly asked Symbian developers to hold on and they would provide a unified dev environment for all their platforms based on QT, so things were getting better. So, with one announcement he breaks the promise and alienates the thousands of Symbian developers. Developers are the only thing more important than consumers, by alienating them he most likely guaranteed Nokia will fail. He is probably confident that Windows developers will jump to Windows OS so he doesn't really need the traditional Nokia developers. He is probably wrong. Then, his only problem with MeeGo (that he admitted - not being a Microsoft OS is more likely the true reason) is that at most Nokia would have one MeeGo device this year. Hey! Do you know which other company does not release more than one new device per year? Perhaps the one you are trying to go after? How do THEY do it? And of course, let's not mention that it was a lie - they had TWO devices to release, the N9 which was released in very small markets (Kazakhstan, Denmark etc lest someone might notice how good it is) and the N950 which was not sold but given to a few select MeeGo developers (you can't even find it on ebay at any price). And have you seen the N9? Probably not since it was not sold in any major markets, but it is truly an awesome device mainly due to its OS. My company currently mainly works on iOS so I have all the Apple devices at home, but when my wife saw the N9 it was the only time she was impressed by a device. (Her words after trying out "hey, compared to your iphone this looks like it came from 2050!"). So while the N900 was the perfect geek tool, the N9 is the only device I have tried that is easier, more fun to use and much much more powerful than the iOS devices (sorry Android...). So, yeah, while Symbian had to go, the developers should not have been scared away. They should have been first moved to MeeGo, which was the original plan with the QT platform being the common denominator, and all resources gone to MeeGo which (sadly, because it is stillborn) is the best current mobile OS, although the limited resources behind it kind of show up as some instability... If you think I talked to much about Nokia, you should see how much I could say about RIM. However, current litigation prevents me from doing so, so commenting on RIM's outgoing "NIH" leaders or their successor will have to be deferred to a later time...
Doesn't anyone find it really odd to see the parent post modded at +5 when... A) He didn't even do a cursory GOOGLE search to see they do indeed have call centers B) He didn't do a cursory GOOGLE search to see they are in the website making business C) It wasn't just a random scam call with all those mounts of damning evidence including logs with IPs, recordings etc (it was an interesting read!).
I mean, I get the whole Microsoft is evil thing, but it does not mean the others are not and mods should at least use some common sense when the poster does not.
Oh, and "Out of character"??? WTH does that mean? Anthropomorphizing a company and extrapolating their character traits from their "Do no evil" marketing slogan? Are you trying to embody the definition of a "fanboi" or does it come out natural?
It is a good thing Google admitted it later (https://plus.google.com/115264064268941645500/posts), people might still be in doubt...
It is a pretty valid question. I know one person who has a good scanner that does not offer drivers that work with post-XP Windows, so she keeps it. Also, I know many people who have low end laptops (and of course netbooks) that don't have the disk space, graphics, memory that would make a newer OS work adequately. And then, I am seriously struggling to watch my HD-DVDs (yes, I got a few dozen in clearance - they are great!) on Windows 7, so I am considering putting the hd-dvd/BD drive on an XP box at the next sign of playback trouble.
It has slowed down air travel and made it inconvenient. It is severely hurting the world economy. A socialist jobs program would just have people digging holes in the desert and would not cause any more harm other than the cost of the program itself.
If you actually RTFA the increase is $153 million and the entire budget for the TSA is $7.85 billion. Of course it still is a huge amount, considering that the TSA is simply a security theater and ALL that money goes to waste. Plus, that money is close to half of the entire NASA budget... Yeah, way to go for ROI! And all that does not make it right for the summary to be so off, but this is slashdot!
At least in Greece, not only Apple advertises a 1-year warranty, but if your device fails within the 2-year time-frame and you go to the authorized dealer and cite the EU regulation they will simply respond "apple provides a 1 year warranty, nothing we can do". They won't easily budge so from then on good luck with the consumer protection groups which have no real power or the legal system which is costly and takes time and effort. So it is not just advertising, at least in some EU countries, apple is actually not providing the EU-required extra year.
My boss bought a unibody Mac Mini a year ago. About 6 months later its USB port started frying keyboards. It took out a few (some expensive) keyboards before he could figure out what was going on. So, he took it to the apple store and they told him to come back in 2 weeks when they would have the parts. About 2-3 weeks later the parts had arrived so he went to the store and they suddenly decided that his warranty was void. The reason? When they opened it, it had too much dust (no cats, no smoking house) so the warranty was void and it was in the system so no Apple store would fix it. But fear not! Here is a $100 off coupon for a brand new Mac Mini! I could not get my boss to fight it ("it is Apple, so it must be as they say") - if it was me I would probably have shoved an ipod down the "genius" throat that would dare to tell me he was voiding my warranty for a reason that is not even listed on the warranty terms! And how could it be listed? Apart from the fact that you need SERIOUS dust and moisture to damage electronics, it is the manufacturer the one who controls whether there will be dust in the machine in the first place, when designing the air intake! The desktops I build are dust-free because I add a filter in front of the air intake fan. I guess the Mac Mini does not have a filter because a little dust can get a gullible apple user to part with his warranty!
A few years ahead? Space colony? Ehmm, have you been following what is going on in the world? I was growing up in the 80's and I remember thinking how lucky I was. I mean we had supersonic consumer jets that could fly us across the Atlantic in 3 or so hours, so by the time I would grow up we would surely have faster and more jets, so I was really looking forward for those weekends in Australia! And then the US had exciting new and reusable space shuttles which could take 7 people up at a time, do their mission and land in an airport, boy was that exciting! I could only imagine how things would be when I grew up with space stations, moonbases (just as long as the moon did not leave its orbit in 1999, if you know what I mean), humans on mars etc. So you know how things turned out. You want believable? Put first colony in the solar system at least a hundred years in the future to avoid being alive and mocked when the proposed date has passed and all we have are 30-foot wide cars, 30 angstrom thick phones, 30 inch long penises...
Well, now you are going for exceptions. Yes, I agree there are exceptions (my coloring book example was an extreme one for the dramatic effect), the art books are such exceptions (except the ones about marble statues I guess...). The "lot of charts and graphs" is not really in this category, as I had many books with charts and graphs in my time which were fine in monochrome paperbacks. So, you can't say the Kindle Fire is better for reading just because it will show color in art books and magazines. For the vast majority of textbooks (hint: notice etymology of "textbook") the e-ink display is much better for reading and actually a decent replacement for paper. In fact, even for color magazines I would say the e-ink display has such an advantage at readability that many people wouldn't mind the lack of color.
I went through the standard Discrete Math books and the only one I see for that price is the Epp one (Discrete Mathematics with Applications at $202.49 on Amazon) - the other ones are cheaper or much cheaper (unless you are talking about another not well-known book, then please elaborate). So, it is indeed very expensive, I don't remember any professor of mine suggesting such an expensive book - if it was over $120 they would apologize for that and tell us we could get the (cheap) previous edition and help us follow with that. However let's see: You are comparing BUYING a hardcover for $202 with RENTING an ebook for $60. In your universe that might seem like a steal, especially since in your universe you want to rationalize the Ipad purchase. In my Universe, the Amazon.com page right under the $202 price lists the trade-in value at $135. So you are only out $67 if you decide not to keep it. But you can keep it if you like it and it will be yours forever and it will not require a specific device to play. And it does not end there, you can buy it used for cheaper and still be eligible for trade-in (or sell it on campus, we had a website for that), from my experience if I did not want to keep a book, it usually ended up costing me $0-$30 depending how much effort I put in buying/selling (and there were a couple of occasions where I even made a profit). If I wanted to keep a book I usually bought a softcover international version, but that option is not available for this particular textbook, so the only option for owning it seems to be the Hardcover.
Would you mind listing the books? Because I too find the example atypical, especially since we are talking about Math books and not fields like Medicine where I have no idea what is going on. There were no lower cost options, like softcover, or ultra low cost options like international editions? Weren't the prices for actual e-reader versions (say Kindle) similar to the Ipad so you would go for the better reading experience?
For one thing, the Kindle that can display color illustrations is twice that. For another, publishers have every right to deal only with Apple and decline to deal with Amazon.
Are you a bit slow? The whole point of the gp is that e-ink is better for reading books regardless the fact that it is not color - the Kindle Fire is not e-ink, so it is not better than the Ipad (just cheaper). Plus, we are talking about textbooks here not coloring books for 5 year olds...
Watch out when the publisher reorders the exercises in the Indian version.
Actually they are called "International Editions" and they are very popular with students since they are identical to the original with the only differences being that they are paperback, with thinner recycled paper and usually not color printing. But I have never seen one that was not exactly the same content (including the order of exercises that you mention). Now, another way to go cheap is to get the previous US edition, but that does have the problems with re-organized chapters & exercises. I have seen professors who care about their students work with both versions (i.e. only common content, or add notes for students with the old edition).
The point is that if you are going to pirate you don't need the Ipad and, in fact, you would be much better off with a cheaper e-ink reader (or save even that and use your pc/laptop).
I saw a link to the forum discussing this somewhere. From the description of the "hack", I was certain this is a hoax. You see, the idea is that the hack is to report the user with private pictures to facebook as having "nude/pornographic" images, and in the image flagging process it shows you private-only pics as well. So it really sounded like a hoax to me to have people go around reporting private profiles of hot girls (or even boys I guess), and I am surprised it is a real security flaw. Not that you can call something on facebook a security flaw, since that would require security in the first place, right?
You wouldn't say things like that if you had lost a member of your family this way. I remember one time several patients had died in the terminal cancer ward of a Korean hospital over the span of a few weeks. They foolishly attributed the deaths to "cancer" (yeah, right, what are the chances), until they realized a fan timer had been malfunctioning!
You don't know what you are talking about. I have been a very happy N900 user for 2 years now, I have always wanted to have a linux machine always with me, especially with a free phone! However, the "phone" experience was not that great. The resistive screen did not help in that respect, while I did prefer it over capacitive screens for other uses (browsing, editing etc), but in general the problem was that the device felt generally unpolished. Under command line everything works great (although they should have put a pipe by default on the hardware keyboard), but give it to a UI user and you can see some frustration. Even Nokia Maps came in an antiquated version. So, I waited for the N950. Well, tough luck, they won't sell it to me. Plan B, a month ago I bought the N9. Well, I was very excited when I first got my N900. With the N9 I was ecstatic and my wife was too! The UI experience is amazing, definately better than android and even iOS! I had never seen my wife be amazed by a phone before - she says that next to the iphone the N9 looks like it came from 2050. Hard to explain but the curved shape of the device makes it very satisfying to swipe from the edge of the screen, which are the simple gestures to control apps (minimize, close). Also, a linux machine with 1G RAM proves really fast and helps the whole experience. Now, on the actual reply to the parent, even with firmware 1.0 (my Denmark N9 still does not have the update) you simply go to settings and enable developer mode. Voila, the terminal appears, you launch it and type "devel-su". Password "rootme":) You can't go more open than that... I do miss my hardware keyboard, I will have to do something about that, but for the first time in 2 years I have a device that is great as a phone and as a gps navigator (offline turn by turn). The first week I got it, I went out of the country for the first time without a laptop. I had my emails, access to my servers, could skype-call my contacts back home, plus with a $3 cable I hooked it up to the hotel room's 50-inch and watched the H264 encoded movies I brought with me. Apart from the keyboard (can't currently play Civilization I under dosbox like on the N900) I also miss the browser of the N900, it was much closer to a desktop browser (complete with flash), but I hope fennec or opera will cover that void. Sorry for the long post, when a simple "you can switch to developer mode in settings" would suffice, but after a month of ownership I am still a very excited N9 owner. And sad at the same time. They are burying the device, since its success would mean the new Nokia CEO's windows-only strategy is BS (which it is), so they are selling it in very limited markets at a quite high price. When the N900 was the phone for the Geeks, the N9/N950 could be the phone for everyone including Geeks and Maemo/MeeGo would give us so much more than the walled garden of iOS or the java on steroids mess that is android.
You mean it is a part of the legal company name. It is the same in other countries. I work for a US company and we have to write the ", Inc." in all legal documents (or software/copyright notices), however we don't include it when people ask us what our company name is and we certainly don't include it in our url. So, I was responding to the post that suggested it be appended to the url as part of the name, but forgot the same would be required for all US companies if we applied the same rule about full legal names.
Hmm, interesting reply. First of all, the phrase "in your narrow worldview" was actually not referring to you specifically, perhaps having used the word "one" would have been better than "you" in the sense I meant it, but English is not my primary language, plus in the end it does refer to every English speaker, especially those who copy the summary, and when writing that phrase I was thinking mostly of the summary writer (perhaps even the article writer, but of course we don't RTFA). Anyway, you then go on to say that you do know what KGaA is, which kind of contradicts your argument that the company is not called just "Merck". Unless you are trying to say that "Nike" is not just "Nike", but "Nike, Inc.", etc which also does not follow the logic that you dropped the "Inc" from the other company just because somebody else dropped it first. Furthermore, I certainly did not assume anyone was being American or even pro-American. At most I accused English speakers in general for not recognizing something that is non-English. Most English speakers are not American. Lastly, I have to say that your opinion about language is narrow minded. And, yes, right now I am referring to you. What you refer to as "English" is just a flavor of the language usually called "British English" (and it is not even as simple as that), and as there is no such thing as a "proper" or "correct" dialect of a language (unless you ask someone educated in linguistics over 50 years ago), I can certainly use whatever one I like as long as I succeed in communicating. And, yes, I like American English and, no, nobody ever mentioned a problem with it before you did.
The company names are distinguishable - Merck KGaA and Merck and Co. Given that neither is called just "Merck", it makes sense to make them use distinguishable pages, probably with their full company name.
"KGaA" is a German acronym for "Kommanditgesellschaft auf Aktien" which is sort of a "limited company/partnership" or something like that. So, the NAME of the company is just "Merck", with the KGaA designation defining the type of the company. Since you would always say the name of the shoe company is "Nike", when officially they are "Nike, Inc.", I would suggest it is the same with the "German" Merck. Moreover, the "US" Merck's full designation seems to be "Merck and Co., Inc.", you can't be pushing for dropping "Inc"s but keeping "KGaA"s just because in your narrow worldview you recognize the former and not the latter. So, the German company is the only one that is just "Merck". Now, what facebook should do or not do about it, I don't know and I really don't care.
You will be surprised at how much compacts have advanced since 2005. My compact Canon from 2005 was great at snapshots, but, as you say, could disappoint at low light conditions. Before the digital era I was into SLR's (Again Canon, I had a nice oldie - the F1 - mainly for astrophotos and an EOS for daily shots), so I had huge lenses that could shoot in dark places and I kind of missed that ability. What I did not miss is the weight of the lenses and the SLR, so I simply waited. This year the ELPH 500 HS came out, a compact with a 24-106mm F2.0 lens and the promise of usability up to ISO 1600. Well, at just $210 (now $200 on amazon) it proved to be a really amazing little camera, really capable at low light conditions. For example, last week I was in Rome. I found out that without flash, even in the darkest museum rooms, I had no problem getting great clear pics. The Vatican museum was not one of the dark ones, so I could walk down the isles and shoot pics left and right without stopping, just shoot while walking - the camera focuses instantly and the IS along with the fast lens lead to unshaken images! So, my point is that I would bet that if you try a recent canon with an f2.0 lens like the ELPH 500 HS, or the S100 if you are not on a budget, you will start carrying your DSLR less and less.
Slashdot Mirror
I have several credit cards with no fees to use when I am traveling. In fact, using these credit cards almost always gives better exchange rate than anywhere else you could change your money (including the bank), so not only is it convenient, you actually save money.
There are many to choose from, I am surprised you know of the 3% fee and yet you did not do a simple search to see if there are fee-free cards - it is not like you have to be loyal to your CC if it is screwing you?
In general, the easiest ones to get are the ones from Capital One. All of their cards come with zero foreign exchange fee, and you will always be approved as long as you apply for the correct tier e.g. if you are a student/no-credit history don't try to apply to their intermediate or upper cards, the low tier still has no annual or exchange fees it just comes with lower limits and higher interest (if you care about the interest it means you don't pay the full balance, hence I suggest you avoid credit cards completely). Then there are better ones, e.g. I usually use a Citibank Thank You Premiere, but that one normally has an annual fee (unless you hit a promotion like I did).
And I think people who travel to Asia can also use Discover cards, which will not be accepted in most other parts of the world.
Be careful though, some countries have switched to the new credit cards with the chip that are not common in the US. So, research before travelling.
Call me when a woman goes into space...
Oh, wait...
The title takes women's rights back several decades.
Oh, yeah, its a big post, uncommon for the likes of the womenfolk ehh? Oh, that's not all, it is also *techy* eehh? Right, because we know how it goes with women and technology - har har!. What? Linux is involved? I' d never...! Wow, Congrats slashdot.
And this post would not be complete without some lame predictions of future /. articles - shall we?
-Fellulah Davidovic, first woman to load a file onto emacs!
-Regina Filange, first woman to live in her mom's basement well into her thirties!
Uh, oh, I am really worried about myself. Not only can I think of many ways I could construct explosive or incendiary devices, I can think of OVER 100 WAYS TO KILL someone! And there are quite a few people I don't really like! Many of them are sitting in the parliament (note: I am Greek) so they have connections to the police!
I am surely a prime suspect for potential terrorism, murder, political assassination and I don't know what else!
Oh, shit! I just realized I know where the VAGINA is! Potential for RAPE right there!!!
Where do I hide guys???
First of all, dude, forget about your mom for a second. If the bride-to-be figures out your wedding choices are to please your mom, there will be problems!
Secondly, invitations that you open and they play music were cool 25 years ago. QR codes would be a lot of fun for your 1 buddy that would "get it" (of course the QR code would have to actually be something). And, well, I will just go ahead and stop you with the lcd's.
The only cool invitation hardware wise that I have seen is the embedded manual paper record player.
If you are good with photoshop perhaps you want to design your wedding invitation (but print it professionally of course) and really make it special. You can also make a website, and a reservation system. For example, I had included a personal code with each invitation, that when entered in the wedding website it logged on the individual and allowed him/her to just select the number of people and accept. No, you cannot have just a QR code there, people won't be able to use it.
Finally, be careful of the mom thing.
You talk about Elop like he is a good thing, when he is either a complete idiot or a Microsoft shill (I estimate the latter).
He was correct that Symbian was a difficult environment to develop to (my company gave it up for that reason), however Nokia had explicitly asked Symbian developers to hold on and they would provide a unified dev environment for all their platforms based on QT, so things were getting better. So, with one announcement he breaks the promise and alienates the thousands of Symbian developers. Developers are the only thing more important than consumers, by alienating them he most likely guaranteed Nokia will fail. He is probably confident that Windows developers will jump to Windows OS so he doesn't really need the traditional Nokia developers. He is probably wrong.
Then, his only problem with MeeGo (that he admitted - not being a Microsoft OS is more likely the true reason) is that at most Nokia would have one MeeGo device this year. Hey! Do you know which other company does not release more than one new device per year? Perhaps the one you are trying to go after? How do THEY do it? And of course, let's not mention that it was a lie - they had TWO devices to release, the N9 which was released in very small markets (Kazakhstan, Denmark etc lest someone might notice how good it is) and the N950 which was not sold but given to a few select MeeGo developers (you can't even find it on ebay at any price).
And have you seen the N9? Probably not since it was not sold in any major markets, but it is truly an awesome device mainly due to its OS. My company currently mainly works on iOS so I have all the Apple devices at home, but when my wife saw the N9 it was the only time she was impressed by a device. (Her words after trying out "hey, compared to your iphone this looks like it came from 2050!"). So while the N900 was the perfect geek tool, the N9 is the only device I have tried that is easier, more fun to use and much much more powerful than the iOS devices (sorry Android...).
So, yeah, while Symbian had to go, the developers should not have been scared away. They should have been first moved to MeeGo, which was the original plan with the QT platform being the common denominator, and all resources gone to MeeGo which (sadly, because it is stillborn) is the best current mobile OS, although the limited resources behind it kind of show up as some instability...
If you think I talked to much about Nokia, you should see how much I could say about RIM. However, current litigation prevents me from doing so, so commenting on RIM's outgoing "NIH" leaders or their successor will have to be deferred to a later time...
Doesn't anyone find it really odd to see the parent post modded at +5 when...
A) He didn't even do a cursory GOOGLE search to see they do indeed have call centers
B) He didn't do a cursory GOOGLE search to see they are in the website making business
C) It wasn't just a random scam call with all those mounts of damning evidence including logs with IPs, recordings etc (it was an interesting read!).
I mean, I get the whole Microsoft is evil thing, but it does not mean the others are not and mods should at least use some common sense when the poster does not.
Oh, and "Out of character"??? WTH does that mean? Anthropomorphizing a company and extrapolating their character traits from their "Do no evil" marketing slogan? Are you trying to embody the definition of a "fanboi" or does it come out natural?
It is a good thing Google admitted it later (https://plus.google.com/115264064268941645500/posts), people might still be in doubt...
It is a pretty valid question. I know one person who has a good scanner that does not offer drivers that work with post-XP Windows, so she keeps it. Also, I know many people who have low end laptops (and of course netbooks) that don't have the disk space, graphics, memory that would make a newer OS work adequately. And then, I am seriously struggling to watch my HD-DVDs (yes, I got a few dozen in clearance - they are great!) on Windows 7, so I am considering putting the hd-dvd/BD drive on an XP box at the next sign of playback trouble.
It has slowed down air travel and made it inconvenient. It is severely hurting the world economy.
A socialist jobs program would just have people digging holes in the desert and would not cause any more harm other than the cost of the program itself.
If you actually RTFA the increase is $153 million and the entire budget for the TSA is $7.85 billion.
Of course it still is a huge amount, considering that the TSA is simply a security theater and ALL that money goes to waste. Plus, that money is close to half of the entire NASA budget... Yeah, way to go for ROI!
And all that does not make it right for the summary to be so off, but this is slashdot!
At least in Greece, not only Apple advertises a 1-year warranty, but if your device fails within the 2-year time-frame and you go to the authorized dealer and cite the EU regulation they will simply respond "apple provides a 1 year warranty, nothing we can do". They won't easily budge so from then on good luck with the consumer protection groups which have no real power or the legal system which is costly and takes time and effort.
So it is not just advertising, at least in some EU countries, apple is actually not providing the EU-required extra year.
My boss bought a unibody Mac Mini a year ago. About 6 months later its USB port started frying keyboards. It took out a few (some expensive) keyboards before he could figure out what was going on. So, he took it to the apple store and they told him to come back in 2 weeks when they would have the parts. About 2-3 weeks later the parts had arrived so he went to the store and they suddenly decided that his warranty was void. The reason? When they opened it, it had too much dust (no cats, no smoking house) so the warranty was void and it was in the system so no Apple store would fix it. But fear not! Here is a $100 off coupon for a brand new Mac Mini!
I could not get my boss to fight it ("it is Apple, so it must be as they say") - if it was me I would probably have shoved an ipod down the "genius" throat that would dare to tell me he was voiding my warranty for a reason that is not even listed on the warranty terms! And how could it be listed? Apart from the fact that you need SERIOUS dust and moisture to damage electronics, it is the manufacturer the one who controls whether there will be dust in the machine in the first place, when designing the air intake! The desktops I build are dust-free because I add a filter in front of the air intake fan. I guess the Mac Mini does not have a filter because a little dust can get a gullible apple user to part with his warranty!
Wow, why am I modded funny? What I wrote makes me sad...
A few years ahead? Space colony?
Ehmm, have you been following what is going on in the world? I was growing up in the 80's and I remember thinking how lucky I was. I mean we had supersonic consumer jets that could fly us across the Atlantic in 3 or so hours, so by the time I would grow up we would surely have faster and more jets, so I was really looking forward for those weekends in Australia! And then the US had exciting new and reusable space shuttles which could take 7 people up at a time, do their mission and land in an airport, boy was that exciting! I could only imagine how things would be when I grew up with space stations, moonbases (just as long as the moon did not leave its orbit in 1999, if you know what I mean), humans on mars etc.
So you know how things turned out.
You want believable? Put first colony in the solar system at least a hundred years in the future to avoid being alive and mocked when the proposed date has passed and all we have are 30-foot wide cars, 30 angstrom thick phones, 30 inch long penises...
Well, now you are going for exceptions. Yes, I agree there are exceptions (my coloring book example was an extreme one for the dramatic effect), the art books are such exceptions (except the ones about marble statues I guess...). The "lot of charts and graphs" is not really in this category, as I had many books with charts and graphs in my time which were fine in monochrome paperbacks. So, you can't say the Kindle Fire is better for reading just because it will show color in art books and magazines. For the vast majority of textbooks (hint: notice etymology of "textbook") the e-ink display is much better for reading and actually a decent replacement for paper. In fact, even for color magazines I would say the e-ink display has such an advantage at readability that many people wouldn't mind the lack of color.
I went through the standard Discrete Math books and the only one I see for that price is the Epp one (Discrete Mathematics with Applications at $202.49 on Amazon) - the other ones are cheaper or much cheaper (unless you are talking about another not well-known book, then please elaborate). So, it is indeed very expensive, I don't remember any professor of mine suggesting such an expensive book - if it was over $120 they would apologize for that and tell us we could get the (cheap) previous edition and help us follow with that. However let's see:
You are comparing BUYING a hardcover for $202 with RENTING an ebook for $60.
In your universe that might seem like a steal, especially since in your universe you want to rationalize the Ipad purchase.
In my Universe, the Amazon.com page right under the $202 price lists the trade-in value at $135. So you are only out $67 if you decide not to keep it. But you can keep it if you like it and it will be yours forever and it will not require a specific device to play.
And it does not end there, you can buy it used for cheaper and still be eligible for trade-in (or sell it on campus, we had a website for that), from my experience if I did not want to keep a book, it usually ended up costing me $0-$30 depending how much effort I put in buying/selling (and there were a couple of occasions where I even made a profit).
If I wanted to keep a book I usually bought a softcover international version, but that option is not available for this particular textbook, so the only option for owning it seems to be the Hardcover.
Would you mind listing the books? Because I too find the example atypical, especially since we are talking about Math books and not fields like Medicine where I have no idea what is going on. There were no lower cost options, like softcover, or ultra low cost options like international editions? Weren't the prices for actual e-reader versions (say Kindle) similar to the Ipad so you would go for the better reading experience?
For one thing, the Kindle that can display color illustrations is twice that. For another, publishers have every right to deal only with Apple and decline to deal with Amazon.
Are you a bit slow? The whole point of the gp is that e-ink is better for reading books regardless the fact that it is not color - the Kindle Fire is not e-ink, so it is not better than the Ipad (just cheaper). Plus, we are talking about textbooks here not coloring books for 5 year olds...
Watch out when the publisher reorders the exercises in the Indian version.
Actually they are called "International Editions" and they are very popular with students since they are identical to the original with the only differences being that they are paperback, with thinner recycled paper and usually not color printing. But I have never seen one that was not exactly the same content (including the order of exercises that you mention). Now, another way to go cheap is to get the previous US edition, but that does have the problems with re-organized chapters & exercises. I have seen professors who care about their students work with both versions (i.e. only common content, or add notes for students with the old edition).
The point is that if you are going to pirate you don't need the Ipad and, in fact, you would be much better off with a cheaper e-ink reader (or save even that and use your pc/laptop).
I saw a link to the forum discussing this somewhere. From the description of the "hack", I was certain this is a hoax. You see, the idea is that the hack is to report the user with private pictures to facebook as having "nude/pornographic" images, and in the image flagging process it shows you private-only pics as well.
So it really sounded like a hoax to me to have people go around reporting private profiles of hot girls (or even boys I guess), and I am surprised it is a real security flaw. Not that you can call something on facebook a security flaw, since that would require security in the first place, right?
You wouldn't say things like that if you had lost a member of your family this way.
I remember one time several patients had died in the terminal cancer ward of a Korean hospital over the span of a few weeks. They foolishly attributed the deaths to "cancer" (yeah, right, what are the chances), until they realized a fan timer had been malfunctioning!
You don't know what you are talking about. :) You can't go more open than that...
I have been a very happy N900 user for 2 years now, I have always wanted to have a linux machine always with me, especially with a free phone!
However, the "phone" experience was not that great. The resistive screen did not help in that respect, while I did prefer it over capacitive screens for other uses (browsing, editing etc), but in general the problem was that the device felt generally unpolished. Under command line everything works great (although they should have put a pipe by default on the hardware keyboard), but give it to a UI user and you can see some frustration. Even Nokia Maps came in an antiquated version.
So, I waited for the N950. Well, tough luck, they won't sell it to me.
Plan B, a month ago I bought the N9.
Well, I was very excited when I first got my N900. With the N9 I was ecstatic and my wife was too! The UI experience is amazing, definately better than android and even iOS! I had never seen my wife be amazed by a phone before - she says that next to the iphone the N9 looks like it came from 2050. Hard to explain but the curved shape of the device makes it very satisfying to swipe from the edge of the screen, which are the simple gestures to control apps (minimize, close). Also, a linux machine with 1G RAM proves really fast and helps the whole experience.
Now, on the actual reply to the parent, even with firmware 1.0 (my Denmark N9 still does not have the update) you simply go to settings and enable developer mode. Voila, the terminal appears, you launch it and type "devel-su". Password "rootme"
I do miss my hardware keyboard, I will have to do something about that, but for the first time in 2 years I have a device that is great as a phone and as a gps navigator (offline turn by turn). The first week I got it, I went out of the country for the first time without a laptop. I had my emails, access to my servers, could skype-call my contacts back home, plus with a $3 cable I hooked it up to the hotel room's 50-inch and watched the H264 encoded movies I brought with me.
Apart from the keyboard (can't currently play Civilization I under dosbox like on the N900) I also miss the browser of the N900, it was much closer to a desktop browser (complete with flash), but I hope fennec or opera will cover that void.
Sorry for the long post, when a simple "you can switch to developer mode in settings" would suffice, but after a month of ownership I am still a very excited N9 owner.
And sad at the same time. They are burying the device, since its success would mean the new Nokia CEO's windows-only strategy is BS (which it is), so they are selling it in very limited markets at a quite high price. When the N900 was the phone for the Geeks, the N9/N950 could be the phone for everyone including Geeks and Maemo/MeeGo would give us so much more than the walled garden of iOS or the java on steroids mess that is android.
You mean it is a part of the legal company name. It is the same in other countries. I work for a US company and we have to write the ", Inc." in all legal documents (or software/copyright notices), however we don't include it when people ask us what our company name is and we certainly don't include it in our url. So, I was responding to the post that suggested it be appended to the url as part of the name, but forgot the same would be required for all US companies if we applied the same rule about full legal names.
Hmm, interesting reply.
First of all, the phrase "in your narrow worldview" was actually not referring to you specifically, perhaps having used the word "one" would have been better than "you" in the sense I meant it, but English is not my primary language, plus in the end it does refer to every English speaker, especially those who copy the summary, and when writing that phrase I was thinking mostly of the summary writer (perhaps even the article writer, but of course we don't RTFA).
Anyway, you then go on to say that you do know what KGaA is, which kind of contradicts your argument that the company is not called just "Merck". Unless you are trying to say that "Nike" is not just "Nike", but "Nike, Inc.", etc which also does not follow the logic that you dropped the "Inc" from the other company just because somebody else dropped it first.
Furthermore, I certainly did not assume anyone was being American or even pro-American. At most I accused English speakers in general for not recognizing something that is non-English. Most English speakers are not American.
Lastly, I have to say that your opinion about language is narrow minded. And, yes, right now I am referring to you. What you refer to as "English" is just a flavor of the language usually called "British English" (and it is not even as simple as that), and as there is no such thing as a "proper" or "correct" dialect of a language (unless you ask someone educated in linguistics over 50 years ago), I can certainly use whatever one I like as long as I succeed in communicating. And, yes, I like American English and, no, nobody ever mentioned a problem with it before you did.
The company names are distinguishable - Merck KGaA and Merck and Co. Given that neither is called just "Merck", it makes sense to make them use distinguishable pages, probably with their full company name.
"KGaA" is a German acronym for "Kommanditgesellschaft auf Aktien" which is sort of a "limited company/partnership" or something like that. So, the NAME of the company is just "Merck", with the KGaA designation defining the type of the company. Since you would always say the name of the shoe company is "Nike", when officially they are "Nike, Inc.", I would suggest it is the same with the "German" Merck. Moreover, the "US" Merck's full designation seems to be "Merck and Co., Inc.", you can't be pushing for dropping "Inc"s but keeping "KGaA"s just because in your narrow worldview you recognize the former and not the latter.
So, the German company is the only one that is just "Merck".
Now, what facebook should do or not do about it, I don't know and I really don't care.
You will be surprised at how much compacts have advanced since 2005. My compact Canon from 2005 was great at snapshots, but, as you say, could disappoint at low light conditions. Before the digital era I was into SLR's (Again Canon, I had a nice oldie - the F1 - mainly for astrophotos and an EOS for daily shots), so I had huge lenses that could shoot in dark places and I kind of missed that ability. What I did not miss is the weight of the lenses and the SLR, so I simply waited. This year the ELPH 500 HS came out, a compact with a 24-106mm F2.0 lens and the promise of usability up to ISO 1600. Well, at just $210 (now $200 on amazon) it proved to be a really amazing little camera, really capable at low light conditions. For example, last week I was in Rome. I found out that without flash, even in the darkest museum rooms, I had no problem getting great clear pics. The Vatican museum was not one of the dark ones, so I could walk down the isles and shoot pics left and right without stopping, just shoot while walking - the camera focuses instantly and the IS along with the fast lens lead to unshaken images!
So, my point is that I would bet that if you try a recent canon with an f2.0 lens like the ELPH 500 HS, or the S100 if you are not on a budget, you will start carrying your DSLR less and less.